How is the 3D controller market looking these days?

Here in Sweden, just a week after 3DConnexion’s SpaceNavigator got a glowing review in the Swedish Geek bible, NyTeknik, it makes it to position number 5 in that publication’s list of the year’s top 12 products, out today.

That’s quite a feat — number 2 on list is the pistol-grip battery-operated torque meter used by Sweden’s first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang, during the current Space Shuttle mission. SketchUp also makes it to the list, no doubt because the reviewer finally started playing with it using the SpaceNavigator. And given that my MacBook Pro is also on the list, I’m feeling rather special right now. (No, I’m not responsible for the list:-)

Also today, news of competition for the SpaceNavigator. Sandio has a press release out announcing the VisonTek XG6, which is primarily aimed at gamers. It sounds promising — apparently it works with Google Earth out of the box as well:

With the new VisionTek XG6 mouse, PC users are now able to move along and rotate about x, y, and z-axis, action that requires users to work with multiple keys on the keyboard or an on-screen navigation bar when using a traditional mouse. The VisionTek XG6 mouse allows PC users to move freely on Google Earth, Google SketchUp, and all PC games. VisionTek XG6 also employs high precision laser sensors and offers users greater flexibility through multiple dpi: 400, 800, 1600 and 2000.

The product website shows you what the packaging will look like, and there is a graphic that shows (sort of) how to the mouse is supposed to let you navigate with six degrees of freedom. It doesn’t seem to be on sale yet, and there is no word on price.

I am of course perfectly willing to review a VisionTek XG6 should it show up on my doorstep, but until then, they’ll have to pry my SpaceNavigator out of my cold dead hand.

Chris Holmes, GeoServer’s lead developer, writes in with details about GeoServer 1.4.0, now fully released:

From the perspective of Google Earth, the improvements we’ve had since 1.3.x with KML are a few fixes for better styling, and better naming of files when one downloads KML from GeoServer.

But although there’s not a ton that’s Google Earth specific, the rest of the push for 1.4.0 was to migrate to Spring for the core. This is the first step in making it easier for programmers to build interesting services on top of the core functionality (ability to read from Shapefiles, PostGIS, Oracle Spatal, ArcSDE, ect. in to a common programming model, and output that to different formats), any of which will be available as streaming KML/KMZ.

The next release (1.5.x) will add some very good raster support, and we’re going to be looking in to doing super overlays from rasters with no additional configuration (including caching them for great performance). And eventually vectors as well, but they are a bit more challenging if you’re doing anything more interesting than just turning all the vectors in to a raster.

I love it when a post writes itself.

How I love competition. Windows Live Spaces announces that Virtual Earth now has all of Italy in high resolution, beating Google to the punch. No doubt, this is a direct result of the deal with Norway’s Blom (blogged here) a company that has quite an inventory of Italy imagery (and which provided the bird’s eye views over several Italians cities released last week.)

Something caught my eye: The third-party imagery used by Microsoft for Virtual Earth does not come with copyright statements from contributing companies — all it says is “© 2006 Microsoft Corporation”. I wonder if this costs a lot more? Remember, too that the Blom agreement allowed for its imagery to be used at work — there is no constraint on using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth 3D at the office. I’m guessing that Microsoft is paying handsomely for all this “smoothness”.

With Google’s purchase of Endoxon yesterday, it really seems like the battle for Europe is heating up between these two giants.

Just about every online publication you can find in Norway right now, and a Swedish paper to boot, is reporting on how if you type “Norway” into Google Earth, it directs you to a spot in the middle of Sweden. Considering that Norway was a part of Sweden until 1905, this is getting a lot of play — the official angle is that according to Google, Sweden now belongs to Norway. (It’s funny in an understated Scandinavian sort of way — you really had to be here.) In some cases, photo editors have conveniently helped along the story by turning off the country names layer before taking the screenshot, as on that layer the names are marked correctly, and that would just ruin the fun.

But why might a search for Norway in Google Earth end up with a placemark in Sweden? My first guess was that Google somehow finds the center of gravity of a country, and in the case of Norway, the country is so oddly shaped that it could just conceivably fall outside the borders of the country itself. But just from looking at Norway, there is no way that the center of gravity would be that far into Sweden.

Instead, I think I’ve figured it out. What Google returns is the coordinate point whose longitude is halfway between the easternmost and westernmost point of a country, and whose latitude is halfway between the northernmost and southernmost point. In the case of Norway, that’s far into Sweden. In the case of Sweden, that’s just into the Baltic Sea. There are in fact few countries where this point does not actually fall within its borders. I had to do a bit of a search, but finally found Croatia, Israel, Laos and Vietnam. If you find others, do let me know.

This is obviously a completely arbitrary piece of geographical trivia, as we’d merely have to agree on using a different reference frame for our coordinates and we’d get different answers. Even so, I reckon Croatia would have a hard time finding any coordinate system that allows this point to fall within its borders. Just nobody tell the Bosnians they “belong” to Croatia, or it’ll be 1992 all over again.

Local Swiss paper Le Temps has some further interesting details on Google’s acquisition of Endoxon. If you speak French, read it here, else the highlights are below, translated:

The contract was signed last friday, the price of the agreement was not disclosed, and it’s the first Swiss company bought by Google.

Endoxon was founded 18 years ago by two bothers, Stefan and Bruno Muff. Until last friday, it employed 80 people, with offices in Switzerland, India and St. Petersburg. Its Indian subsidiary assembles satellite images of different countries (Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Japan, Dubai…) and adds layers of points of interest.

“We are the best,” assures Samuel Widmann, Endoxon’s [ex-]CEO. “Nobody in the world assembles as much information as we do on maps.”

In 2006, Endoxon will have revenues of 10 million Swiss francs (USD$ 8 million).

Google is buying Endoxon’s database of POIs, its international subsidiaries that process and create the digital maps, as well as a mobile division, whose products are not yet on the market.

The other activities of Endoxon, (classic cartography, geomarketing and the “Trinity” tool that enhances MSFT Outlook) will be regrouped into a new company called Mappuls.

Around 50 of Endoxon’s 80 employees, among them Samuel Widmann et Stefan Muff, will join Google’s Swiss offices in Zurich. [It’s not clear from the article if those 50 include the subsidiaries.]

“It’s excellent news for us… and also for Google!” says Stefan Muff. “We have Swiss quality standards, and our solution will be able to be applied globally.”

Google’s Kay Oberbeck, Google spokesperson for Northern Europe, is quoted as saying: “We are first going to extend their applications to other countries on the old continent [i.e. Europe], and it’s not impossible that we’ll go beyond that.”

That’s what the article said. I find the India connection most interesting. Map processing can be repetitive, and cost effectiveness in this field can mean far more processing for the buck.

Looks like there are at least two newly minted Google employees who only yesterday were blogging as Endoxon employees: Bernhard Seefeld and Gregor J. Rothfuss. In to my newsreader they go.

BTW, they both have a sense of humor.

The other announcement today (#1 was NASA + Google) involves Google announcing the purchase of Endoxon, brought to my attention by Jonathan Crowe at The Map Room.

What is Endoxon? It’s a Swiss “Internet mapping solutions company”, as Google describes it. Endoxon’s website has been replaced with a page with some more details. For example:

Why is Google acquiring Endoxon?
Endoxon’s assets and its European network bolster engineering and technical resources for Google. This acquisition of Endoxon will enable us to leverage their analysis capabilities and will help us build out and improve the functionality of Google Earth and Google Maps across Europe.

Why did Google acquire only three of Endoxon’s six business units?

Google acquired Endoxon’s internet, mapping and data processing business units. Unlike the others, these complement Google Earth and Google Maps technologies and services.

“The others” are Data, Cartography and Direct Marketing, which are being spun off into another company, Mappuls.

What did Endoxon’s website say up until yesterday? Google’s cache doesn’t have it, which is why it’s always good to have some competition. From MSN’s cache, here is how Endoxon presented itself until recently:

COMPANY

Since 1988 Endoxon AG has impressed with ground-breaking solutions for data, cartography, the Internet and mobile communication. Endoxon AG not only offers a platform for every conceivable geographic need but also has positioned itself as the market leader in the development of the cutting-edge technology thanks to its convincing and successful innovations.

This pioneering enterprise is responsible for the first MMS service and the first independent mobile portal in Switzerland for SMS, MMS, WAP and WEB. And also created another landmark for the Swiss Museum of Communication and Transport: Swissarena, the l argest aerial photograph of Switzerland and the nation’s second largest depiction after the country itself.

The name Endoxon stands for quality, creativity, and innovation strength around the world.

I also emailed a Geneva-based friend up on Swiss tech companies, and here’s how he responded to my question about what all this means:

Looks to me like a body shop for rendering and processing map data into usable applications like map.search.ch. It takes ages, apparently. I don’t think any wow new products are going to come of it straightaway.

The idea of Endoxon being a processing resource for Google fits with Google’s own statement that the acquisition will “bolster engineering and technical resources for Google”.

I first came across Endoxon’s work last year, using map.search.ch, the Swiss Post’s web mapping service for Switzerland, which did all of the niftiest scrolling, zooming, layering and address-searching since the early days, sometimes long before Google Maps and the others were doing it. In that sense they are true innovators. Do check it out, and take note of the ability to turn on layers of points of interest in a way that is very similar to what Google Earth currently does. An indication, perhaps, of how some of Google Earth’s functionality might one day bleed back into Google Maps?

One is left to wonder whether today’s two announcements are related. On one end, Google agrees to organize NASA’s information, which involves close cooperation and more access to data. On the other end, Google beefs up its processing prowess via the acquisition of a Swiss company. In other words, a bastion of geospatial digital analysis and processing expertise is being gathered.

ESRI, are you watching? What if Google ends up doing all the analysis and data storage server-side for us, cheaply? Wouldn’t that put a chink in ESRI’s ArcGIS offerings?

[Update 1006-12-19: Christian Spanring points out that the acquisition now has some of Google’s European competitors relying on Google. Sneaky!]